Synopsis A blogging lady is chosen as the ruler of Earth by an alien race. They don’t conquer Earth directly but it simply happen. They’ve chosen Adrianne Hammer as their representative, though nobody knows about this decision. It’s only that everything she writes comes true.

Review Everything feels distanced, especially the protagonist’s relationship with her son. I didn’t care about both at all. It is a quiet story, nothing unexpected happens, it doesn’t stay.

Meta: isfdb. This short story was published April 2015 in Clarkesworld. It is available online.

Wars aren’t fought anymore outside in the battlefield by armies of strong warriors. Instead, they are decided by depudies. Not outside, but inside: Both sides at one dining table, and the first to die poisoned looses. This civilization has cultured females in the art of poisoning and antivenoms, and the main protagonist Lady Cassava is a hero in it, the Lily of her House, battling Yew, the Horn of her House.

Vivid language and imagery of tastes in a boring love story within an interesting setting. Interleaved is the protagonist’s background story and her relationship with her six children.

Meta:isfdb. This short story was published December 2015 in The Magazine of SF&F. It is available online.

The 588th in an alternate reality version of a World War II-era Soviet squadron consists of female pilots only. Their task is to terrorize the Germans by flying planes with silenced engines sounding like brooms. That is why the Germans call them witches. There is only one real witch in the squadron, the main protagonist resembling flying aces like Manfred von Richthofen, just on the other side of the war: Not Germany, nor U.K., U.S. but the Russian side.

The story’s setting reminds me of „Raisa Stepanova“ by Carrie Vaughn (see my review of Dangerous Visions), only with a supernatural turn. The topic isn’t about warcraft or magic but about camaraderie like some Jane Austen novels. Don’t expect much of a plot or high tension arc in the story but a lyrically narrated tale with lovely sidekicks like the commander’s origin story.

A story about quantum computing, Gödel’s mathematical theories, and multiuniverses. Quantum computing isn’t exactly a new thing – the first real implementations were demonstrated some 15 years ago, and it is slowly improving, manifesting in Microsoft or Google experiments with 512bit Qcomputers and the NSA investing heavily in it.

The author plays around with some unorthodox corners of quantum computing, leading to spooky results, and a nice ending. Not much of a character study, plot, or technically new elements you haven’t seen before. For geeks like me, it is a very likeable, technical story. Greg Bear knows this stuff from several years consulting at Microsoft research, so I trust his facts are correct.

Some of us love SF from a time when gruesome facts didn’t yet hit the imagination of a jungle planet with six leg beasts. For those people, Dozois and GRRM published a followup volume to Old Mars last year titled Old Venus. This story is taken from it. Dharthi is a researcher who thinks she will find Venusian’s indigenous species in a different place than everyone else. Contrary to her lover, she isn’t popular and neither gets sponsorship to conduct her research easily. She gets on a stupid mission by herself, risking her life and findings in the dangerous jungle of a second Venusian continent.

Dharthi’s character isn’t enjoyable, to say the least. But the straight-forward, linear action with lots of foreshadowing has some great moments. Note also a couple of references, starting with the story’s title from a David Bowie song. And it is a recreative deviation from all those near future CliFi stories; I’d say: A space opera here and there cures the day.

Synopsis: Climatic change has drowned coast cities like New York. People like Dom flee elsewhere, e.g. to Greenland’s now huge city of Qaanaag which isn’t exactly welcoming the refugees. Dom found work as an ice-grunt, working the ice calves for fresh water which will be delivered to the thirsty nations. It is a bad job and barely feeding his family, his wife and son, his only pride. His wife divorced. Now, he has to up his failing relation to his son with something that he can be proud of – in this case it is his last memory, a shirt from NYC.

Review: Interesting as the speculative elements of climatic change and its consequences are, the story doesn’t depend on them. It could have been written in nearly any time, because the clear emphasis is on the father-son relationship. Which is well developed, though a bit predictable in its ending. It could easily involve you emotionally, and that’s everything I ask from a good story.

This is a new author who I’ll watch out for!

Meta:isfdb. This short story was published September 2015 in Asimov’s. It hit several Best of Anthologies, and it is available online.

Synopsis In a postapocalyptic setting, a wandering girl Dancy Flammarion, full of religious superstition encounters a wannabe scientific girl Jezebel Lilligraven – „named after a whore and an idolator“ – under the threatening wings of a dragon or pterosaur. Both bring forth arguments what it would be and reveal a lot about their upbringing. But Dancy has a mission to fulfill and goes fight the dragon with her knife:

Dancy pushes the thought away, because self doubt’s as dangerous as books that say people evolved from monkeys and slime.

Review Lots of U.S. folklore and atmosphere which is quite foreign for me. Dancy’s mother has been reading many good books to her daughter, like Bram Stoker’s Dracula („All men are mad in some way or the other…“), H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds („softened almost into melody“). But none helps against her thoughts of Noah’s flood, and Adam and Eve versus dinosaurs. I’ve never met anyone who believes in creationism, so it was an exotic setting and discussion for me. Somehow, the scientific girl knew how to argue and what to expect from creationists, which is something I couldn’t stand against, as I would be speechless or maybe furious.

And then, Dancy comes up with something which is not from the Bible – the dragon – and Jezebel with something absolutely unscientific like a Pterosaur coming through a timewarp.

Dancy is a real interesting character: in her world, monsters are very much real and she may – or may not – be guided by an angel. I don’t know if she is a deluded girl, a monster herself or really fighting a holy war.

The short story seemed to be cut out of a larger sample, missing beginning and ending. Now, I found out that it is in fact part of a series around Dancy Flammarion. I guess, I have to take a deeper look into that one.

Synopsis Two sisters, Graça and Cristina, leave Brazil to settle on another planet and escape the power of Chinese. They need to alter their genes.

Review Capitalism is driven by Chinese in this setting and they are viewed as the future imperialists from which people try to get free. This is another take on the relationship between future sentient A.I.s and humans: while the former can predict everything, the latter can touch everything. I’m not too convinced that A.I.s really would need humans as vehicles to fulfill their plannings – they simply could use robots. It is also about the relationship between the two sisters: Christina disdains her AI connection but Graça relies upon it. Although internet gives full immersion and instantaneous communication, those two girls cannot communication, don’t really understand each other.